The Forgery of Venus
Michael Gruber, , read by Eric Conger. . HarperAudio, $39.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-06-145304-5
Gruber and reader Eric Conger do away with all certainty in this literary thriller, in which a brilliant but exceptionally troubled contemporary painter becomes embroiled in a scheme to forge a Velasquez painting, even as he is tormented with amnesic breaks and visions that seem to be from Velasquez's own life. There's a slight shift in pitch as Conger switches from the nameless narrator of the novel's framing sequence to the main story's protagonist, Chaz Wilmot, but other than that, he doesn't attempt to differentiate the other characters' voices from Chaz's. That's an entirely appropriate choice, as this is a frighteningly introspective narrative, recounted by a man who literally does not know who he is from one moment to the next. Is he going mad, being driven mad, actually shifting among realities or some combination of those options? For this audiobook to work, the reader and the author must make the narrator's hallucinatory perspective convincing, and both succeed wonderfully and chillingly at this task.
Reviewed on: 05/26/2008
Genre: Audio
Downloadable Audio - 978-1-4561-0416-0
Downloadable Audio - 978-0-06-163261-7
Downloadable Audio - 978-0-06-163262-4
Open Ebook - 336 pages - 978-0-06-163198-6
Other - 336 pages - 978-0-06-163203-7
Paperback - 336 pages - 978-0-06-087449-0
Peanut Press/Palm Reader - 336 pages - 978-0-06-163202-0
